Retelling of the epilogue of the essay: Arkhipov S.V. Human Children: The Origins of Biblical Legends from a Physician's Perspective. Joensuu: Author's Edition, 2025. [In Russian]
Epilogue
Prelude
In the
Finnish town of Nurmes, a stirring performance recounting the birth of the New
Testament’s Emmanuel in Judean Bethlehem has just concluded. Beneath the glow
of the aurora borealis, the audience hurries from the frost to the warmth of
hearths. Some set out feasts and pour steaming glögi, while we open ancient
tomes. Their worn spines and edges refract the biblical saga like crystal
prisms splitting white light into a spectrum of radiant hues.
Creation
and Birth
We see that
in the beginning, there was motion—its source, place, and time unclear. The
earliest motion was creation itself, with nothing prior, not even movement. It
struck the opening chord of the cosmos we know. If anything existed before, it
remains unknown—be it Something, Someone, or Nothing. From motion, the world emerged,
and all within it stirred. To this day, everything moves and will continue
until motion ceases in a final act, the closing scene of the universe’s drama.
This alone we grasp; beyond it, we know nothing, unable to fathom the structure
or essence of the grand, dark Stillness to come.
Through
motion, matter, energy, and information arose, bound by time. These flowed,
transformed, waxed, and waned, taking and losing form, merging and dividing in
ceaseless flux. Interstellar gas condensed, igniting the Sun; space swirled,
dust clumped into small bodies and planets. These spun, collided, heated, and
cooled. Rocky spheres in the “Goldilocks zone” gathered liquid into oceans.
Waters boiled, froze, evaporated, and condensed, enriched by salts. Heavenly
debris fell, lightning struck, waves churned, stagnated, and moved anew.
Then,
mysteriously—perhaps only on Earth’s shallows—life sparked from the inanimate.
Unlike the lifeless, life could replicate itself and regulate its organisms’
daily stresses. It moved purposefully, spreading from seas to land, burrowing
into soil, soaring skyward, and filling every niche. Creatures arose, grew,
changed, birthed, killed, and died, transitioning between living, geological,
gaseous, and liquid states, never pausing until death—the irreversible mismatch
of energy, mass, and information.
In northern
Africa, humanity bloomed: conscious, driven, curious. The advent of modern
humans was a movement of mind, as enigmatic as life’s origin. Restless, they
crossed seas from their cradle continent. Some settled in the Zagros Mountains,
where ancestors dubbed Adam and Eve were hemmed by harsh cold, sheltered in a
secluded valley. Generations followed—second, third, and beyond. There,
humanity thrived, meeting needs, adapting to seasons, reshaping their world and
themselves. From this serene past, descendants wove tales of an Edenic garden.
They left the highlands and returned, carrying ancestral stories in their
hearts.
Once, the
heavens unleashed torrents, flooding plains and drowning tribes between ridges.
Only the foresighted survived, hidden in a rocky “ark” through a local “global”
deluge. They multiplied, tamed the land, grew grains and vines, and dispersed.
In constant motion, they fought, bonded, toiled, idled, wed, parted, sought understanding,
and bowed to the unknowable. They crafted tools, founded settlements, raised
towers, and birthed the first civilization: Sumer.
In Ur of
Mesopotamia’s Shinar, Terah fathered Abraham, who begat Isaac in Canaan, who
sired Yaakov, who raised Yoseyf. With a physician-surgeon in Hyksos Egypt,
Yoseyf penned Byreyshyt, chronicling existence’s dawn and his lineage.
Descendants made this text a moral and spiritual cornerstone. For millennia,
through defeats and triumphs, they studied and expanded it, drawing strength
and guidance. Judges ruled, kings reigned, nations rose and fell, people faced
captivity and returned, clinging to ancestral covenants.
To this
lineage came Jesus Christ’s adoptive father, Joseph, a righteous carpenter. Wed
to Mary, he noticed her early pregnancy and led her to Egypt, avoiding
Nazareth’s gossip. Their path through Judea echoed Rachel’s perilous journey,
with death a looming threat. Travelers sensed this gloom, and none offered
shelter, fearing mortality’s shadow. In Bethlehem (31°42'16"N,
35°12'22"E), they found an empty stable. Joseph cleared it for Mary’s
labor, perhaps fetching a midwife from a nearby caravan. Help arrived, and the
child, swaddled, was laid in a manger. Witnesses rejoiced at the safe birth.
Shepherds, finding the cleaned livestock pen turned home, respected the new
mother’s rest and spread word of the joyful event. All marveled at divine favor
upon these strangers.
Joseph
hosted a modest feast for kind passersby, who gifted Jesus his only earthly
treasures. Mother and child grew strong in the herd’s refuge. Per Moses’ law,
thirty-three days later, they visited Jerusalem (31°46'44"N,
35°13'33"E)—a city they’d return to thirty-three years hence, he in glory,
she in sorrow.
Ministry
and Teaching
Returning
to Nazareth with a newborn risked slander. Foreseeing this, Joseph pressed on
to Egypt, following Abraham and the Midianite traders who brought Yoseyf there.
In a Jewish diaspora, Joseph’s carpentry sustained them during Jesus’ early
years. When the boy’s age grew ambiguous, they journeyed back to “Israel’s
land” in Nazareth (32°42'24"N, 35°18'17"E). There, Jesus’ childhood
unfolded, revealing uncommon traits and a thirst for knowledge. Raised largely
by Mary, who later focused on younger siblings, he knew no biological father.
As a youth,
Jesus drifted from family, delving into thought and studying Byreyshyt. Its
insights into creation, life, and anatomy captivated him, spurring interest in
medicine and questions like the cause of Yaakov’s limp from a damaged “ligament
of the femoral head” (ligamentum capitis femoris). Like Yoseyf, at 16 or 17,
funded by modest means, Jesus left rural Nazareth for cosmopolitan Alexandria
(31°11'57"N, 29°53'43"E). Inspired by Yoseyf’s rise, his talent and
memory impressed Musaeum professors, earning him a place in its medical school.
There, he became a physician.
For nearly
a decade, Jesus treated Nile Delta patients, embodying the spirit of
Byreyshyt’s scholarly editor, Imhotep the Younger. Ethnic tensions in
Alexandria drove the polyglot healer-philosopher back to Galilee. Seeking
purpose, he pilgrimaged to the Jordan (31°50'14"N, 35°32'59"E), where
John recognized his pastoral calling. Desert solitude clarified his priorities,
solidified in a vivid dream. In Capernaum (32°52'51"N, 35°34'32"E),
not Nazareth, he began practicing medicine, as locals saw him only as a
carpenter’s son. His charisma, effective treatments, and wise counsel drew
crowds for healing and enlightenment.
Roman
Palestine’s (31°52'39"N, 35°18'40"E) healthcare was inadequate, with
priests focused on prevention and few doctors overwhelmed. Jesus trained
disciples in medicine, but their field-based learning lagged, prompting
complaints. On a hill by the Sea of Galilee (32°48'50"N, 35°35'26"E),
he unveiled a social doctrine rooted in revised Jewish principles. His vision:
a humane network reducing conflict, fostering trust, and improving mental and
physical health across families and regions. Later, he welcomed other
ethnicities into this universal framework.
Priests saw
his growing influence as a threat. Rumors of plots surfaced. To preserve his
community, Jesus crafted a memorable death, blending Jewish, Greek, and
Egyptian ideas. He promised “resurrection” in collective memory and life “on
heavenly clouds” through future generations’ hopes. His “God”—the patron of
Abraham, Isaac, and Yaakov, akin to Sumerian Nanna—was Science: the constant
laws governing existence. This insight let him shape his fate.
With Judas
Iscariot’s aid, Jesus staged a public crucifixion on April 3, 33 CE, in
Jerusalem. Spectators, struck with guilt, left Golgotha envisioning the
“Physician on the Cross.” His “ascension” was not physical but a lasting
imprint on humanity’s psyche.
Cadence
Jesus’
death sparked a social ripple, touching billions across ages. Distortions of
his teaching emerged, yet accepting his reality and analyzing his message
strips away two millennia of mysticism. Science frees his Sermon’s principles
from dogma, promoting reason over illusions and superstition, as seen in
Byreyshyt. This yields a “scientific religion” grounded in universal laws.
United by ethics, Earth’s or Mars’ inhabitants could build a truthful,
equitable society, valuing facts, individuality, and morality.
In Nurmes,
by Lake Pielinen, Jesus’ name and intent endure. Christmas hymns and his ideals
fill the sails of this city-ship, gliding on Karelia’s emerald waves toward a
harmonious future, carrying us, Children of Humanity, along. Amen!
Retelling done by ChatGPT, a language model trained by OpenAI to assist with text analysis and editing, with our minor edits.
Author:
Arkhipov S.V. – candidate of medical sciences, surgeon, traumatologist-orthopedist.
Citation:
Архипов С.В. Дети человеческие: истоки библейских преданий в обозрении врача. Эссе, снабженное ссылками на интерактивный материал. 2-е изд. перераб. и доп. Йоэнсуу: Издание Автора, 2025.
Arkhipov S.V. Human Children: The Origins of Biblical Legends from a Physician's Perspective. An essay with references to interactive materials. 2nd revised and expanded edition. Joensuu: Author's Edition, 2025. [Rus]
Purchase:
PDF version is available on GooglePlay & Google Books
Keywords
ligamentum capitis femoris, ligamentum teres, ligament of head of femur, history, first patient, injury, damage, Bible, Genesis
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